Short answers, pulled from the story.
Frederick Copleston is best known for A History of Philosophy, a multi-volume work published between 1946 and 1975. It covers ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy and has been described as "a monumental achievement" that stays true to the thinkers it discusses.
Copleston debated the existence of God with Bertrand Russell in a celebrated BBC broadcast in 1948. The following year, 1949, he debated logical positivism and the meaningfulness of religious language with the analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer.
Frederick Charles Copleston was born on the 10th of April 1907 in the parish of Trull, near Taunton in Somerset, England. He died on the 3rd of February 1994 at St Thomas' Hospital in London, aged 86.
Copleston converted at the age of eighteen, reasoning that if Christ founded a Church to teach all nations, it must teach with authority. He concluded that, despite its faults, the Roman Catholic Church was the only one that could reasonably be thought to have developed from what Christ established.
Copleston clarified Aquinas's Five Ways in the Summa Theologica by distinguishing between in fieri causes and in esse causes. This distinction showed that Aquinas was arguing for an omnipresent, continuously sustaining God rather than merely a first cause that could disappear after setting events in motion.
Copleston was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1970 and received a personal professorship from the University of London in 1972. He was made an Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Oxford in 1975, received honorary doctorates from Santa Clara University, Uppsala University, and the University of St Andrews, and was appointed CBE in 1993.